Ghost encounters on Kenyan roads: Fact or fiction?

In a different group called Sikika Road Safety, Kenyans recounted their spooky sightings.

"Actually it's true," writes Dannie Mwish. "My friend gave a woman a lift at night, on reaching the destination he was alone. He couldn't speak for two days. He later replaced the back seat and burnt the one that lady sat on."

"A few months ago while traveling to Kapsabet at around 4am, a few metre to the Sachang'wan mass grave, I saw a fireball bouncing in the middle of the road and can't understand where it came from since the road was very clear at that time of the morning. I just swerved past it iendelee kudance yori yori. These things exist my people," writes Felloh Yule Msanii.

What Does Science Say?

But what does science says about these apocryphal encounters?

Christopher French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, University of London writes: "The idea that some kind of consciousness could survive bodily death is completely at odds with modern neuroscience. For another, if spirits of the dead really did survive in some form, we might expect their appearance and behaviour to reflect some kind of eternal unchanging afterlife."

He adds that our fear of our own mortality plays an important role in belief in ghosts. "Most of us desperately want to believe in life after death – and the idea of ghosts, however scary, seems to offer support for such a notion."